Randomness #2

The other night I made my first real dinner in a long time...with minor problems. Since I had waitressed this whole past year, I really didn't cook that often when I did have the rare free evening with no plans. Alright so I decided to make this Chicken with Tomato-Herb Pan Sauce that I saw through Epicurious, though it was originally from Bon Appetit. I went to the grocery store (2x), the first time was mainly for spices since I had absolutely zero (I now just realized that I have left all my spices back in the grouphouse in DC and didn't bring them back to NJ...oops, but that is another story).

With a now fully stocked cabinent with basic things like olive oil, salt and pepper and so on, I started my dish. I haven't cooked chicken in so long, that I did have to ask my roommate Valentina to remind me when you know a chicken isn't pink in the middle anymore. I did eventually pan-sear the chicken and then moved onto the sauce. I accidentally didn't buy enough cherry tomatoes (you would think that going twice to the grocery store I would have realized this), but the sauce was still enough to cover everything.

Despite setting off the fire alarm and burning the rice because I forgot to turn off the burner, things turned out ok! I definitely want to try this recipe again and maybe add a few things of my own or do some of the suggestions people had (like deglazing, cutting the chicken into smaller pieces, or putting over angel-hair pasta).

Afterwards I had a BIG bowl of Neopolitan ice cream! My roommate from China, Lu, looked at me and was amazed that I could eat it all with no reservations.

And of course at the end of the night before I went to bed I had a nice mug of hot chocolate (with WHOLE milk people...none of this skimpy watery skim milk. Sidenote: Dutch stores are big with what would be the equivalent of 2% milk here, you can buy whole milk of course, but there really isn't any skim milk).





On an entirely different note...

Two weeks it was the 10th anniversary of September 11 and I had so many people talk to me about what it was like and what I felt now. I watched a summary of the events of that day from CNN as well as a show that CBS had put on about the point of view of firefighters that day that 2 Frenchmen had done.  Everything on the Dutch TV was devoted to 9/11 that day and I thought it was very well done.  It was nice to talk about it with international students here and get a sense of their thoughts, very comforting as it was one of the first major world events they remember growing up.

At the end of that Sunday afternoon, which had been mostly rainy, the clouds broke out and we were greeted with a wonderful scene that pictures do not do it any justice (if you look closely there is the 2nd rainbow right above the main one). In person you could see all the colors, it was so clear and vibrant! Honestly it was breathtaking and was such a nice ending for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 here in the Netherlands.